Page 91 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘You were?’ She smiles. All this time, he’s been thinking about her. She was so wrong to believe otherwise.
He grins. ‘Yeah. Trudy kept me up to date.’
‘Not much to report,’ Josie says, snorting.
Brett shrugs. ‘I wanted to know. And one day she said she’d called your mum and told her how worried I was. Then she said to give your mum a call. So I did.’
It’s hard to imagine how the conversation went, and Josie wishes she could have heard it – but all that matters is he’s here, with her, and without her mother chaperoning.
If only it hadn’t taken a car accident to get them here. If only her parents had trusted her in the first place. If, if, if …
Her whole world has seemed composed ofiflately.If only Brett were here.That was one of them. Now he is. It’s almost too much.
She presses her head into his chest, trying not to cry.
‘Hey,’ he says, rubbing her back. ‘Hey, what’s up?’
‘I can’t believe you’re here.’ Wrapping her arms as far around him as she can, she tries to stop the tears so they don’t go on his shirt, but they flow anyway.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ he says, hugging her tighter than he ever has before. ‘I’m going to help you. With your rehab.’
‘You can’t do that,’ she says, straightening up. She doesn’t want him to see her trying to walk properly again, all the incompetence and mess it will entail. How will he want her after that?
‘I can,’ he says, and he kisses her nose, laughing. ‘And I will. Come here.’
As he hugs her again she lets herself go into it. Lets him hold her, feels the strength of his arms and his back and his spirit and his determination.
‘This is just our start, Josie girl,’ he says. ‘And I’m not missing it.’
She stays cradled against him until she starts to fall asleep, and is barely aware as he lies her down on the bed and pulls the sheet up, then sits beside her and holds her hand.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Right near this cafe at The Entrance is the field where Trudy and Laurie once took Dylan’s children to the circus. The kids were staying for the weekend – Dylan must have talked Annemarie into letting that happen because she was never that fond of allowing the children to be away from her.
When Laurie was alive – yes, that’s when Dylan used to visit more. When Trudy would see her grandchildren more.
She hadn’t put it together until now, because the two years since Laurie’s death have involved so much readjustment that she failed to realise that her son’s physical absence from her life went along with her husband’s.
So he doesn’t want to see her without Laurie, is that it?
How can she not have known this?
Trudy gazes out from the cafe at people gathering around to watch pelicans on the water. Pelicans always look so patient, and slightly amused, like they’re just entertaining the tourists for a while, then they’ll spread those big wings and take off to a quieter beach.
The pelicans bring people to The Entrance. Not that they’d brought her here today. Sol has done that.
‘Hopefully there’s something you like on the menu,’ he says, breaking into her thoughts. ‘I haven’t been here before but my daughter likes it.’
Sol doesn’t talk about his daughter that often, possibly because Trudy doesn’t ask. She’s aware grief might have made her boring. It’s difficult not to become completely introspectivewhen you lose the centre of your world. You have to go inward to try to find another, even though you know it’s not there. That it’s gone forever. When one lives alone in the wake of that grief, it’s even harder not to tunnel in and stay there, and it becomes harder still to make an effort to connect with other people. Then it becomes a habit to not try. Even though there are so many people who come and go from the salon, there aren’t many she connects with, and fewer still who are genuinely interested enough to ask, ‘How are you?’
Perhaps she doesn’t askthem. That’s another thing that goes when you’re miserable: manners. But she’s trying to be civil. Polite. That’s why she’s smiling and nodding and looking at the list of sandwiches and toasted sandwiches in order to see that, yes, there is something she likes.
Sol gives the waitress their order while Trudy gazes once more at the water and the pelicans and thinks about the last time the children stayed with her. It was that same trip, with the circus. Three years ago, it would be now. Laurie was ailing but they still had hope, not that the doctors gave them much.
‘They’re always popular,’ Sol says, and she sees him gazing too at the water.
‘They’re magnificent birds. I never get tired of looking at them.’
